Whether you’re new to influencers promoting gambling or following the story like a hawk, Spencer Cornelia has posted a neat clip summarising several of the key issues. In a YouTube video titled ‘The $1 Million Per Month Influencer Problem‘, the investigator dives into the shady world of crypto casino sponsorship. In it, he exposes the relationships between influencers and casinos, the phenomenal sums of money being thrown around, and its impact on viewers.
Cornelia kicks off by exploring the assumption that luck is the only thing standing between losing and winning at a crypto casino. He doesn’t explicitly say they are faking big wins, but the question is left hanging in the air after broadcasting a big Plinko win at Stake casino.
This leads to Twitch, and in an ironic twist, there’s a clip of content creator xQc talking about casino deals showing things which are ‘not real. It’s a fantasy; it’s fake.’ In Cornelia’s words, numerous streamers are getting ‘fake balances’ and ‘whenever they go bankrupt, the platform just feeds them more money.’
In an example of the amount of money being offered, we see how popular Twitch streamer Mizkif turned down a deal worth $10,000,000 a year for streaming 15 hours’ worth of content per month. One of the reasons why Mizkif said no, was that one condition of the deal was moving to Canada, which he was not prepared to do. Why Canada, you might be wondering? Well, the site in question, Stake, restricts players from the United States.
However, this does not mean players from the US cannot gamble at Stake – provided they are willing to use a VPN. Note that doing so is a breach of Stake’s terms of service and how this could affect withdrawing funds. By activating his VPN, Cornelia shows just how easy it is to access Stake from the United States and demonstrates the lack of information needed to set up an account there, highlighting that no verification of address or age is required.
Underage gambling is a major concern because, as Cornelia puts it, any kid can get a crypto wallet they can use at casinos which advertise heavily on Twitch via streamers like xQc and Trainwreckstv. Both streamers have highlighted the dangers of gambling, often advising viewers not to gamble but spending hours doing so anyway while promoting their sponsors. If losses are one way of judging how much money some of these influencers are making, xQc is seen telling fellow streamer Pokimane that he lost $1.85 million in April off-stream.
It’s not just Twitch streamers getting in on the act. Cornelia also looks at rapper Drake‘s relationship with Stake, as well as YouTuber Steve Will Do It. At one point, Steve talks about putting his own money into ‘this’ but appears hesitant, saying, ‘…there’s no point of putting my body or mind through that type of stress, right?’
One crucial point made in the clip is that ‘…these influencers make so much money that they can gamble irresponsibly and have a massive parachute to fall back on.’ As he puts it, if a huge loss is no big deal, or when they’re using house money anyway, they can be ‘reckless’. While this might make for entertaining viewing, it can create false impressions about winning big from gambling. ‘You can win $1 million dollars in slots; it just takes you gambling $1.2 million dollars to get there. Even more problematic, some game providers are suspected of having significantly increased the max bet on these particular sites just in order to accommodate these fake crypto streamers.
This loops us back to Twitch, which has not announced any new moves to restrict gambling streams on the platform, but is this about to change? A recent petition was started at Change.com by Erin Jordan, encouraging advertisers to use their influence to get gambling banned on the platform.
The petition sums up many of the main concerns and alerts businesses such as Mcdonald’s, Burger King, and PepsiCo that ‘Your advertisements on Twitch are being played next to Twitch broadcasters who promote unregulated online casinos that disproportionately damage young viewers and racial minorities.’ It’s early days yet, but Twitch and the businesses singled out in the petition are yet to respond.
